


The Nikiforov Gambit

by animaginaryquill



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chess, Chess champion Viktor Nikiforov, College Student Katsuki Yuuri, Computer Programming, Gen, Prompt: Other Career/Sport AU, Victuuri Week 2017, me: okay another sport. What's a sport? CHESS. CHESS IS TOTALLY A SPORT, minor mention of Celestino, prompt: firsts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9636539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animaginaryquill/pseuds/animaginaryquill
Summary: “He’s so quiet. What is he thinking? He doesn’t usually play so seriously.” Yuuri’s hands fluttered nervously.“And you would know,” Phichit waggled his eyebrows at him. “What with modelling your program after him and all that other – what do you call it,researchabout him for like, fifteen years.”(Victuuri Week Day 1:  firsts, other sport/career AU. Viktor is the ten time World Chess Champion, and Yuuri is an about-to-graduate computer science student with more than a penchant for chess.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> A disclaimer: I actually have near zero knowledge of chess outside of what moves each piece can make, or of coding, gdi. Yes, I know chess is essentially ‘solved’ and AlphaGo is the current big thing in artificial intelligences playing games, bear with me.

Viktor Nikiforov was twenty feet away from him.

"Stop hyperventilating, stop chewing your nails," Phichit swatted at Yuuri’s mangled hands, "It’ll be fine."

They were standing with the other spectators along the walls and watching the chess champion, alone at a chessboard in the middle of the cold, white room. His opponent was a single robotic arm attached to a quietly whirring processor, which was in turn connected to the computer that occupied most of the room downstairs.

The robotic arm was Phichit’s idea. It was ridiculous, and excessive, and entirely too much. He didn't know what in the world Phichit had done to bribe the robotics lab to drag out an arm just to play up the whole chess-playing-computer schtick, and he didn’t want to find out.

"He’s so quiet. What is he thinking? He doesn’t usually play so seriously." Yuuri’s hands fluttered nervously.

"And you would know," Phichit waggled his eyebrows at him. "What with modelling your program after him and all that other – what do you call it, _research_ about him for like, fifteen years.”

"Shhh!" It was Yuuri’s turn to swat at Phichit. "Nikiforov is usually more... Confident. Showy. Flowery. I don’t _know, what does this mean._ "

"Yuuri, it’ll be _fine._ "

"Easy for you to say, and don’t use my name so loudly." Yuuri whisper-hissed. 

"Why not? It’s only Viktor Nikiforov, ten time world chess champion who once claimed that no predictable computer could defeat him, playing a chess game against a program that you wrote. People should know who you are. He should know who you are. You’re Yuuri Katsuki–"

"You’re too loud you’re gonna distract him–"

"–who has written code for the most complicated neural network I have ever seen, for a program that can defeat Viktor Nikiforov in chess–"

"We’re only in the mid-game."

"– that has defeated all other known chess playing programs with a thousand game winning streak, _all by himself–_ "

"It wasn’t on my own, Celestino helped me towards the end–"

"–of last year’s Candidates Tournament fame–"

"Yeah right, _fame_." Yuuri mumbled.

Christophe Giacometti of Switzerland had won that tournament and the spot to challenge the reigning champion, though it had been a close fight with Leroy and Altin. While Yuuri? Had lost. Miserably. He had thrown almost every single match, making the most ridiculous moves at the most inopportune times and had practically gifted the competition to his opponents. He could have told the rising whispers of ‘ _what is that boy even doing here?_ ’ that his dog had died back in Japan and the guilt was eating him alive, or maybe he could have told his shaking hands that he had missed his medication for the past week in a fit of irrational self-sabotage, but all of that was stupid, stupid, stupid, and did not matter.

He lost, while Viktor handily trounced Giacometti at the World Chess Championship to keep his title for the tenth year in a row, and that was the cold hard truth. 

So he had slunk back to Detroit in misery. He threw his chess set under his bed and himself into work, finally finishing the project he had been toying with his entire undergrad life. He probably should have told Celestino much earlier, but it had seemed like such a trivial thing when he started and he didn’t want to bother his head of department about it. It was only two months away from graduation and too much time spent holed in his room before he finally caved in to Phichit’s fussing and told Celestino, who sputtered a lot ( _You did all this on your own?! It’s practically complete?! Why isn’t this your final year thesis_ ) and proceeded to rope in most of his lab to help polish it. 

Then somehow talk had leaked onto the chess forums. Yuuri thought his life would end right there but no, Viktor had to issue a challenge, and _then_ Yuuri was dead and buried under a mound of _what the actual fuck is happening_. 

Before he knew it, Viktor had flown to Detroit to challenge his program in person (his amazingly handsome person, said a corner of Yuuri’s brain, in utmost betrayal of all his other sensibilities) instead of setting up a virtual game like any normal human being. Not a full tournament, he had said, just one match. Yuuri wondered if he was regretting not taking up the offer of a blitz game. Time dragged on minute by aching minute as Viktor stared with furrowed brows at the chessboard in cold, ringing silence. 

Yuuri narrowed his eyes. It was hard to tell and he couldn’t see the board clearly from this distance, but there was a rook and that pawn there set up like so– 

"Oh _no_ you don’t." Viktor suddenly said. The words weren’t particularly loud, but they echoed unnaturally in the large white room as he moved his knight with a smooth flourish. The other people who were gathered in the small room – the whole of the computer science department, some people from physics and mathematics, other people he recognised from tournaments and far too many more he did not – started a low murmur. 

Phichit nudged Yuuri, "What happened?" 

"It looks like the program set up a Nikiforov gambit." Yuuri wanted to laugh. To think that his code would have tried to play Viktor with a move he himself invented. 

The game went on in tense silence for another half hour. Yuuri’s nails lost their last remaining sliver of existence. 

Suddenly, Viktor’s face cleared, and he smiled. 

Five moves later he said, "Checkmate." 

The room erupted around him, but Yuuri couldn’t hear anything. 

That was it then. That was the closest he was ever going to get to playing a chess game against Viktor Nikiforov. And it wasn’t even _him playing_ , just a bunch of stupid code on a computer with a processing power greater than the entire human race put together, and he had _still_ lost. Yuuri would go back to Hasetsu in disgrace and help out at the family onsen while wallowing and patently ignoring the question of getting a PhD. His project had failed, no one was going to want to supervise him now anyway– 

Suddenly he was aware that Phichit was shaking his arm furiously and whispering much too loudly, " _Yuuri! Viktor is coming this way!_ " 

So he was, bearing down on them _much much much_ too fast. Yuuri stopped breathing. There was a look on his face that Yuuri could not understand – was it elation? Pride? Or could it be anger? – and _is he going to talk to me? Oh god what could I possibly say he’s –_

Viktor swept right past them and was gone out the door with barely a glance in their direction. 

_Well_ , thought Yuuri, with an odd mixture of relief and disappointment, _that probably could have gone better._

———  
All in all, this meant that he was caught utterly unprepared when Viktor Nikiforov showed up in his apartment the next day, entirely shirtless _for some godawful reason_ , and declared "Yuuri! From now on, I’m going to be your coach!" 

**Author's Note:**

> So imagine Computer Science student Katsuki Yuuri, coding at two in the morning and [ throwing a small yellow rubber duck at his computer ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging):
> 
> “Viktor!”  
> -squeak-  
> “Nikiforov!”  
> -squeak-  
> “Plays!”  
> -squeak-  
> “Stupid!”  
> -squeak-  
> “Chess!!!”  
> -squeak-


End file.
